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DWP pilot failure on Work Capability Assessments ‘calls into question willingness to learn from suicides’

Published:
19th May 2017

This is a very shortened version of an article by John Pring in the Disability News Service, 17 May 2017. The full article, which we urge you to read, can be found here.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) appears to have gone back on its promise to a tribunal to address a fatal flaw in its “fitness for work” test that has led to the deaths of multiple benefit claimants with mental health conditions.

More than two years after ministers promised the upper tribunal that it would test improvements to the work capability assessment (WCA) process, DWP has finally released some details of the measures it has introduced.

The details – which were heavily redacted – emerged following freedom of information requests from Disability News Service and lawyers from The Public Law Project (PLP), which represents the claimants who took the case. But PLP says the DWP’s response “..must call into question whether there is any political will to stop the discriminatory effect of the WCA on people with mental health problems“.